FORK

Jenny and I lived in Dallas and were part of a local cycling club when we were kids. I met her on the track one morning. I had helped adjust her helmet. We were both pretty regular, but I didn’t know if she wanted to be there. She would always ride slowly, and speed was a drug for me; I would slow down for her. Then she stopped cycling around the time there came an invisible divide between the boys and the girls and the girls seemed to know something that we didn’t. I had read somewhere that girls matured before boys. I ascribed her decision to quit to some understanding I hadn’t yet garnered.

By the time we were sixteen, we -- boys -- had caught up a little bit, and Jenny and I knew exactly how mature the other was…

***

Lo-fi beats and soft voices and the clatter of cutlery surrounded us. Jenny and I were sitting at a corner table with a coffee each and there was a light directly overhead, bright, and golden. She had an almond muffin, too. The concoction of smells in the café was cuddling my heart. Who planted coffee beans and why didn’t they get the Nobel Peace prize? If it weren’t for them, thousands of people would be murdered at red lights each morning. Jenny blew on her coffee and her glasses clouded. She took a sip and the condensate opened up and she looked at me.

“What’s the problem with Sunday?”

“Have that road race, remember,” I replied.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.”

I took a sip, and she took a sip.

“You didn’t come last Sunday either?”

“Training. Diet.”

“Hmm,” she murmured.

I felt like there was something left to say.

“What?” I said.

“Well, I mean it’s just that we haven’t been seeing each other a lot you know? Today’s the first time in two weeks that I’ve met you,” she said.

“Sorry, Jen. With three hours of cycling every day and four hours on the weekend, I become very tired. There’s also the diet thing. I can’t eat anything worth eating.”

There was a pause. Jenny tore a sugar sachet and tapped it with her index finger, and it formed a small mound on the surface. She stirred.

“Tell you what,” I said, “We’ll go out on Saturday.”

“Saturday?”

“Yep.”

“A day before the race? Don’t you have to, like, rest or something?”

“Oh, we’ll rest…” She laughed. I joined her.

***

There were dangling colored lights, sweaty people, sticky beer, and stupid people. We went to her house afterwards and I couldn’t do it. I’d drunk too much. It was a portent of things to come…

Somehow, I wasn’t hungover on Sunday. I thanked god for my capacity and tried to focus on the race. It was an individual one-day racing event and we had to cover one-hundred miles. There were cyclists all around me. I imagined us from the top, an anxious blob of humanity. I adjusted my helmet, my goggles, inhaled, exhaled. There was a man by the starting line who had a starter pistol in one hand and was talking to someone on his phone. The waiting always made me anxious and my stomach would feel very full. I licked my lips. Then the man cut his phone, made some gestures to an organizer, and aimed the gun skyward. It went off.

The first twenty miles of the race were supposed to be straightforward sprinting. It was my strongest suit. I weaved through the cyclists ahead of me when the traffic scattered, and almost reached the front. I must have gone around six miles, but my stomach was still very full. Normally, my nerves would calm down by this time and with them my stomach. It wasn’t happening. I kept on. It was embarrassing. I felt like I shouldn’t get up from my saddle to speed up. And there were still over ninety miles to go. The next restroom was eight miles away. I would lose my advantage by that time. People were rushing past me, right and left.

When I reached the restroom there were very few cyclists left behind me, and there was the climbing section next which I wasn’t good at. I shat as fast as possible and continued on. I gained a little bit and then it happened again. Ultimately, I had to stop three times in the race, and in addition to the time lost I was also feeling weaker with every stop. To my credit I finished the race. But it didn’t matter, I wasn’t nearly close to my goal time and was down in the ranks.

I went back home that night and went into the shower and turned the valve for hot water. It burned and felt good on my sore backside. I showered and showered. Then I dried myself and went to bed.

 ***

I didn’t talk to Jenny for a few days. I wasn’t avoiding her, but I wasn’t going out of my way to meet or talk to her. The race had taught me that I needed to be exactly on par with my schedule. Besides, what was there to talk about? She had gone her own way, and I was simply pedaling on mine. That writing – she wanted to be a writer – didn’t require the hours that I was putting in, and that it didn’t exhaust her, was good for her. I couldn’t spend time thinking about other people or being with them. There was another race in two weeks. There always is one. 

Five days after the race I had some time and called Jenny up. There was a park about midway between our houses and we decided to meet there at night. I’d had my dinner and biked there. Jenny wasn’t there yet. I saw a cat in the park lingering by the swings. I sat on a bench and looked at it. It looked at me. I thought I’d seen that cat before, when Jenny and I and the cat were very young. The cat scurried off. I think it was Harry Potter that taught me to not trust animals; they might just turn out to be humans. And any sane person knows that humans are not to be trusted.

“Hi.”

I looked in the direction of the voice; It was Jenny. I waved and she sat down next to me.              

“It was bad,” I said.

“The race?”

“The race.”

“What happened?”

“Stomach issues. Drunk night. Tired mind and body. Take your pick.”

“Are you angry with me? It was your proposal to go out.”

“I didn’t say I’m angry.” 

“Well, you don’t have to say it, do you,” she said getting up from the bench. “What do you mean ‘Take your pick’?”

Now I was angry. I had made time for her, hadn’t I?

“It was my proposal. But what do you want me to do? Almost every day is a bad day for hanging out.”

“So, you’re saying you can’t anymore? Is that it? Because I can’t buy that you’re so damn busy that even a day of rest is too much for you.”

“It’s not just the day, it’s before-after that, too.”

“Alright, then. Now you take your pick. What do you want to do?”

“I really like you, Jen.”

“But you don’t want to spend time with me anymore?”

“I need to be something, anyone. There’s too many talented folks out there.”

“Bye, Dan. I hope you get what you want…” she said and quickly turned around and walked away. The way she spun, I thought she was going to cry. I certainly was. We’d met eight years ago…was this the end? I wanted both. Recognition and Love. What is this? You lose no matter what you do, the whole idea of life was a problem. You get one thing, you lose another. Cycling was simple: You pedal, and the bike moves forward. Was there no one way to live?

I put my elbows on my knees and clutched my face in my hands leaning forward. I don’t know how long I sat like that. When I looked up the cat was there again. The faithful cat was still there. Perhaps animals are to be trusted after all. I leaned back on the bench and saw the sky. Black wallpaper with white sprinkles and a crescent moon. The gods were smiling at me. Or maybe they were mocking me. I’d just lost a friend and girlfriend. I cycled back home.